Piano Duet

This little girl loved the piano then

 and has now learned to love the duet

Hat

Yes, making anything turn into a hat has always made him laugh. Now he has discovered when HE turns things into a hat, it is also funny.

Sleeping Baby

M is taking pleasure in reminding me how difficult one-year-olds can be. He is a whirlwind of chaos. And his lack of words is creating a little communication problem. He generally refuses to do the baby sign language signs that help assist this transition. They were so helpful with J, and M knows them, he just doesn't see the point in the charade when I know what he wants, and he knows I know, so can he just get his darn milk! He prefers to shriek like a howler monkey. Unless I'm repeating my grocery list in the car to myself while buckling him. Then he will smile and sign milk because he recognized the word when I said it. And he likes to reach for things and either swat them violently if it isn't what he wants, or grab them if he does want it. It is impossible to know what kind of reach it is until you have milk or food splattered on your shirt and the wall.

Apparently I chose poorly. And do so often. 

But he is still so incredibly sweet. He loves to play and be tickled and has a laugh that just makes me think of bubbles escaping his little heart. He likes to throw things and his first non-named word was "catch" as he lobbed a ball towards his dad. He also enjoys throwing heavier things, like flashlights. At his sister. 

We are lucky we still have sweet moment like this one.  It makes me forgive the perpetually mess he leaves in his wake and the damage he has done to my ear drums. This is my favorite M. With his soft blonde hair, being still, cuddled with his favorite red blanket. These are my Kairos moments.

Dantzel and Brian got hitched!

Somehow I lost June. Not quite sure how it happened because I have physical evidence it did indeed exist. This wedding was one of the adventures.

Brian was John's college roommate and has been a great friend for along time. He's shown up on the blog often, like rock climbing here and every Balloon Fiesta and Albuquerque adventure. Dantzel was my college roommate and we stayed with her during our DC trip and another time here.

And 8 years later in the coolest turn of events ever, they decided to marry each other! I know, right?! I'm going to pretend I had something to do with the matchmaking even though I didn't really.



And to make it even better, my in-laws watched the kids, John's brother (who also roomed with Brian in college) and his wife Piper (who is probably one of the top 20 people I'd have on my team to survive the Apocolypse, for her company and not just her extensive knowledge of knots) road tripped with us. And Lil' Sis rode with us as well so it was essentially the best group ever. Please say the last phrase with a teenage girl lilt.

Brian is not one for pictures and did an admirable job suffering through.









Brian is an adventurous soul and has owned excessively large military trucks. This is his current one, next to his other large truck for scale, that they drove home in. Despite eschewing facebook, I'm sure he ended up all over the internet. Who could resist snapping a shot of the Just Married sign during a red light?




Meanwhile, our crew enjoyed ourselves. And if you know us, that means we enjoyed eating. Lots and lots of eating. And taking pictures with statues because that's what we do.

Everything in New Mexico has green chiles in it. Everything. Even the gyros at the Mediterranean place.

The eggs benedict were on green chile biscuits and had a jalepeno glaze.

Overall it was a fantastic trip with excellent company to celebrate two wonderful people. We wish them the best!

Ballet

When J started spontaneous doing leg lifts, using the couch as a bar, I asked what she was doing. She replied, "My ballet exercises," in very matter-of-fact tone. It continued at random times throughout the month so I figured Angelina Ballerina must have had a greater impact than I realized.  I looked up a little ballet class through the city parks and rec and figured a class once a week for a month would be something she'd love. It goes against my principles to pay for classes for a 3 year old, but it was cheap and there should be perks to being the oldest.

Well she loved it. LOVED it. And not just for the costumes. Normally the moms have to wait in the hall and peek through the window in the door, but the last class we actually sat in back and watched. Apparently she wasn't just making sounds as she pranced down our halls. Her 3 year old pronunciation of Chasse stumped me, but was accurate.

 I was beyond impressed with her teacher. She managed to teach some basic ballet principles to 12 three year olds. She managed them artfully. She had J's heart on day 1 because Miss Stacy wore a sparkly Rainbow Dash shirt. And she gave out dumdums at the end of every class.

Since J liked it so much, we did a second session and were happy find find our friend Taylor signed up too.

Here is a video from the first session if you want to hear her joyfully exclaim, "This is so fun!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0ctOnbnmSw&list=UUi9ZazT5V4pnYn8_5Dq4B0Q

(I spent a half hour trying to embed the video and I admit defeat)

I'm a little nervous she is going to love dance and I'm going to have to fork out hundreds on dance costumes and shoes. After finishing up last year's photobook, I found pictures of when we went to see the Nutcracker and realized I might be partially to blame for the ballet interest. I suppose I'll start budgeting for the tulle now.

First Day of Preschool

Then she wanted to take a picture of me on the first day of preschool. Here are the results:

The instagram shoe shot

The avant guard cropped head photo

dres

This is a little better. Forehead-free is the going to be the next trend in wedding photos.

She picked out her outfit at the store and was so excited to go to her "preschool house." The highlight was snack time. And I may have looked at the clock at 11:30am and realized belated I was supposed to pick her up. There were two kids still waiting so I didn't feel that bad :)

Paddleboard Yoga

There's this thing called standing upright paddlboarding. SUP if you are cool, but I'm not that cool. It's a big buoyant surfboard sort of thing and when I first saw it done, I knew I wanted to try it and that I would like it.

Call it a fault of expectations or ego, but I tried it and I loved it. My friend Lauren invited me to do paddleboard yoga with her last summer but I got the stomach flu and had to give my spot to someone else. Well this summer,the studio she goes to was doing it again and we made it out to Tempe town lake to try out some asanas on the man-made sea.



The instructors had a water proof camera and snapped some candid pics, but the only ones of me were unflattering and not even doing anything cool. Naturally I will post one for your enjoyment. This one makes me look like an Amazon and Lauren look a snack I brought along to eat later.

This one is slightly better. And I'll tell you that it is deceptively difficult to lean like that on a board. You really have to keep your weight on both feet or you go for a swim. Yoga on the water really makes you focus on technique.

But dude, some of these ladies were rocking it. I only held the headstand for like 2 seconds and fell smack into the water, but these ladies were solid and inspiring.

As a group we looked pretty cool and all the pedestrians stopped to watch.

Strangely enough the headstands weren't as hard as I expected. I'm a bit rusty since gyms don't typically do inversions, but if you could ignore the board's seam in your head, it was doable. Tree pose was the most challenging to me. You had to keep your weight so perfectly on all 4 corners of your foot and the only stationary focal points were far away on the shore. I could barely get my foot to my ankle.

It was so much fun that I took my little friend Callyssa out to try it. And I brought my phone along in a ziplock to record the fun.

 If you ever get the chance to try paddleboarding, take it! It is so much fun!